Author’s Note: You know how sometimes you get bored when you’re working on a story and you feel like doing something else but you know if you stop writing you’ll never get back into the rhythm? This is the result of that boredom. Drabble. AU. Mostly fluff.

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Satellite

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Night brings a blanketing cover of darkness to the Hogwarts castle that reassures the students creeping about the corridors long after curfew. Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy move steadily and stealthily towards the same destination.

The moon shines brightly on a seventh floor tapestry depicting an Italian noble holding the hand of a woman draped in green robes. She is heavy with child. A pale figure steps into the light, sharp grey eyes pinning Ginny where she stands in the shadows.

“It’s no use hiding,” comments Malfoy dryly.

Ginny steps into the light to face him. She has to look up to see his eyes.

“I wasn’t hiding, Malfoy,” she retorts, emphasising his last name.

She enjoys a gloating moment when he flinches, but regains her composure when he glares at her across several feet of moonlight.

Ginny frowns as she watches him. “You’re always the one hiding,” she points out bitterly and her eyes skitter away from his figure.

Out of sight, out of mind. It’s a futile attempt; she’ll stare at him again, like she always does.

“You’re always the one running away.”

Her eyes dart back to his face, and try to memorize the shape of his lips. She hates it when he’s logical. She lifts a shoulder and lets it drop, looking away from him again. She knows it annoys Draco when her attention is anywhere but on him. She folds her arms and leans against the tapestry covered wall, counting the seconds ‘til her eyes wander back.

“Dammit, what do you want to hear?” he demands.

Twenty.

“Anything!" Ginny almost screams in frustration. "'I can’t live without you' or ‘they don’t matter’ would be perfect, but I wouldn’t want to get my hopes up with you,” she tells him, pulling sarcasm over the pain in her voice, unwilling to let on just how much of her heart she’s opening for him.

As she’d known he would, Draco scoffs at the declarations, and Ginny heart falls. She’s had enough of him for one evening, and staying will only lead to more unendurable silences. Only, somehow, she’s found she can’t move, and as her eyes narrow in annoyance she also can’t believe she left her wand on her bedside table.

She hears Draco sigh before he levitates her around to face him. He ignores her pointed glares as he walks over. Strolls, really. If she could, she’d berate him for taking his own sweet time. He doesn’t release the hex until he’s grasped her wrists firmly in one hand.

“Don’t turn your back on me,” he orders, annoying Ginny even further.

“What do you want, Malfoy?” she snaps, and flinches at the steel in his eyes.

He doesn’t answer until he’s backed her up against the wall, and his lips are right next to her ear. When he does, his breath makes her shiver.

“You never called me that last year,” he says, and she wants desperately to be able to read his expression.

He calls her on it and pulls back to look at her eyes. Short of closing them there isn’t much she can do to hide the truth that lays there.

“Don’t make me do this, Malfoy,” she warns in a voice that has threatened too-eager suitors and riotous older brothers but that won’t stand a chance against this man.

“Don’t call me that,” he hisses, and crushes his lips to hers. She is helpless against the onslaught, against him. He nibbles and teases; the kiss is just a taste, a reminder, but Ginny is swept away by the feelings that course through her as much now as she was then. When he pulls away, she feels dazed and has to work to catch her breath.

“Draco,” she whispers, and her voice catches. He rewards her with more drugging kisses and they tumble to the floor together, a tangle of clutching hands and feverish lips.

She knows he won’t say it tonight, but neither will she. She knows it’s there, almost tangible in its enormity, and saying it won’t make a difference to the two of them. Because she also knows he needs her, like a flower needs the earth, like the moon needs the sun, just like she needs him.